Monthly Archives: September 2001

We're building a new tower (a hydraulicly actuated beast), and we've been forced to take down the old one. However, it's still in one piece, and we'd be glad to donate it to anyone willing to come and get it. It weighs about 500 pounds (that's a guess, three or four people can carry it), and is about 15 or 16 feet long.

If you have a vehicle, or can rent one, that'll fit it, and would like to have it, let me know! We'd rather see it go to good use than be scrapped. We'd be glad to give you a quick show'n'tell on how we rig the pulleys…

Like I said, the lot has a big pebble beach, and the rest of the lot is treed. Deer are abundant on the property… Seriously, it doesn't get much better than this. Hmmm… Would I rather build a life here, or would I rather live in some dirty city breathing poison? Here's a photo of the beach:

I just got back from doing laundry, which I spent reading a cookbook about how to cook weeds and wild mushrooms and stuff like that. When I returned I had mail from an old family friend, who is also acting as my realestate agent for the project. It's looking like we have a nice property:

100 acres

Road access

600 feet of pebble beach on Lake Ontario

Partially environmentally protected land (the 100 feet of land on the lake can't be touched)

It's beautiful — we'll go see it soon and bring back pictures, but I know the area. It's the remote south shore of Prince Edward County, which is generally regarded as the most wonderful region of Ontario. It's dotted with clean private (but public access) beaches and conservation areas, and is full of wildlife.

Here's the wonderful thing about this property — it's been on the market for three years, and no one has even made an offer on it. It's off-grid, so running power lines in has made it too expensive to develop. Since we're running solar, it doesn't matter. Assuming we can get a good price, and everything is as good as it sounds, this may well be it!

On an unrelated note, Spiritualized's new album just came out and is being played here right now… Didn't I promise a while back that I was going to post a video from ModCon? Watch for that later, with an amazing soundtrack. If you like it, buy the album. I know it's more convenient to download MP3s and I download them as well, but artists deserve to be rewarded for their work.

To the person who was posting anonymously in the Whatever forum whining that ModProm and IAM and BME are just scams for me to make money off, I think you need to realize a few things:

How much are people charged to use the IAM site? It's free, even though it costs me a big chunk of money.

Ok, you do have to write a story or send a picture, but where do most of those pictures go? Do you really think I'm somehow rolling in a pot of gold because of your tongue piercing story?

They go in the free sections of BME. I don't only give you a membership for your picture, I then lose money on it because I then distribute it for free. They're there to help other people, not for profit.

BME was run totally for free until the bandwidth in the adult sections became so staggering that there was no choice but to charge for those areas.

Outside of BMEshop, there's no advertising on BME. I could take adult ads like most E/N sites have done, but I don't want to portray that image to the world.

BMEshop makes enough to cover IAM's bandwidth and hosting costs. It pays salaries to the people who work at it (it's a full-time job, why shouldn't it), but there is no profit from it that goes into my pockey. ALL money from BMEshop goes to supporting free sites.

BME/HARD does well, and does operate at a profit. It has many paying members that enjoy it a great deal. But it also has ten times that many free members. The profits pay for BME's bandwidth, and, when times are good, raise capitol for things like ModCon (which has cost me at least $50,000 to host over three years. Even if the book sells well, I will not recoup that investment), and BMEradio, and Modified Mind, and SPC, as well as donating significant amounts to causes like iWasCured and the Church of Body Modification. Sometimes BME makes more than this and I draw a small salary from it (and why shouldn't I if it's taking enough time to force me not to work on other projects), but at other times it doesn't and I push money back into it.

Thanks to a banking system that doesn't like “my type of business” (their words), long periods have gone by where BME/HARD wasn't even generating money and I had to cover all costs out of my pocket (and from donations as well).

As far as ModProm, you can look up the numbers yourself and do the math yourself. It's a break-even event at best.

I work an 80+ hour week. I used to work more. I own multiple telephony and internet software-related companies and do occasional consulting contracts in the same realm. My take home salary, especially after BME's costs are taken out, is not that high — it would certainly be higher (easily triple, if not more) if I just gave up and took a traditional job. The Mercedes (since sold) and TT were leased, and that lease was split with a friend. The rest of the vehicles were inexpensive project cars, with much of the work done by me and friends. The land I'm buying is scrub land that costs a fifth what a nice house in the city costs. The houses we are building there are built out of recycled materials and cost nothing but labor.

If it was really such a scam and I was rolling in money, don't you think that there would be lots of BME's sponsored by porn companies? Did it ever occur to you that if I wanted to make money I could just make the entire site a paysite and suddenly start making an order of magnitude more? I do this stuff because I believe in it, not to make money.

On an unrelated note, does anyone know what's up with Dennis from DMT? I've got quite a few messages from people asking me because they're waiting on orders and are getting no phone or email responses. Because I host his site, I know that he hasn't checked his mail since the 6th of September — if anyone knows if he's OK or not OK, please let me know.

And, I guess that at the end of October, I'll be driving from LA to Toronto. ://trinity is coming back… Assuming congress passes the new anti-terrorism bill, or some variant thereupon, I suspect there will be a wave of computer professionals leaving the US as well. Among other things, it institutes life sentances for even minor computer hacking crimes, and pretty much throws out the right to private communication.

I'm doing an image update right now for tomorrow (well, probably it'll be posted around 2AM once usage starts to drop and my FTP begins to run fast)… Not many images “freak me out” but I've got to admit that this one did…